PerFare (2022-2025) is a project co-funded by the Creative Europe Culture Programme, which intends to enhance the cooperation between the cultural and the welfare sector by creating innovative models for artistic interventions supporting people with physical or mental health issues.
Two Hungarian artists were invited to participate in the project – meet Szilvia Papp and Veronika Szabó and their work:
Szilvia ‘Vivi’ Papp is a media artist and researcher of socially engaged participatory art. In her experimental work she seeks to question and loosen fixed patterns of identity and stereotypes.
Within the Perfare project, the “I brought a baby into this world” is a participatory, site-specific art experiment reflecting on a social issue, aiming to present and loosen the taboos around our obstetric system, socially imposed maternal patterns and motherhood.
Veronika Szabó is a Budapest-based freelance actor, director, clown and applied theatre professional. She studied theatre at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, London and at Goldsmiths. She is a founding member of the Hétpróbás Társula and a Fellow of the Red Nose Clowns Foundation. She works as an actor, theatre-maker and occasional choreographer with independent contemporary theatre companies and in theatre both at home and abroad.
Her Perfare project, Dal a szívnek is a series of workshops in which “we sing and make music together with the residents of the Vàzsonyi Vilmos Vàzsonyi Home for the Elderly in Baross Street, evoking the ritual and atmosphere of singing around a fire in a community space. We sing the songs that the elderly know well, be they folk songs, dance festival songs, military songs, chansons, serenades. Songs bring us all together, they open up the past and become collective in the present, regardless of age or mental state. Songs evoke memories and feelings that we share and relive, sharing their mood. The choir will perform the songs in a closing dance for the other residents, relatives and a small audience, followed by a costumed dance. The sessions will be held in collaboration with musician Andris Cseh, who has been volunteering to sing with the elderly for many years.”